The history of science has tons of examples of the same thing being discovered multiple time independently; wikipedia has a whole list of examples here. If your goal in studying the history of science is to extract the predictable/overdetermined component of humanity's trajectory, then it makes sense to focus on such examples.

But if your goal is to achieve high counterfactual impact in your own research, then you should probably draw inspiration from the opposite: "singular" discoveries, i.e. discoveries which nobody else was anywhere close to figuring out. After all, if someone else would have figured it out shortly after anyways, then the discovery probably wasn't very counterfactually impactful.

Alas, nobody seems to have made a list of highly counterfactual scientific discoveries, to complement wikipedia's list of multiple discoveries.

To that end: what are some examples of discoveries which nobody else was anywhere close to figuring out?

A few [...]

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First published:
April 23rd, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/csHstEPagqs8wChhh/examples-of-highly-counterfactual-discoveries

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“Examples of Highly Counterfactual Discoveries?” by johnswentworth

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Examples of Highly Counterfactual Discoveries?” by johnswentworth